Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Slow And Frequent Updates Kills The PS3 Experience


Although I'm more of a Xbox 360 gamer, I do occasionally fire up the PS3 for some God of War 3 or Guitar Hero love. But one thing that I always thought was just an issue with me, turns out to be an issue with many PS3 casual gamers. It always seemed to me that when ever I turned on my PS3 there was a mandatory system update that you had to take, or you couldn't play your game. And unlike Microsoft who only does maybe two major updates a year, Sony does them routinely. Minor features (some that are not even wanted) that could be saved until Sony has one massive update every half year. But no, Sony likes to nickel and dime you with these stupid mandatory updates, which many times kills the game experience.

During those updates you can't do anything else on the PS3, but sit there and wait. I thought there was something wrong with my download speed or PS3 wireless connection, but according to Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica you're only getting 2.5Mbps from Sony which is about the low-end of DSL. So between download and install you're looking at about 30 to 45 minutes before you can play said game, and by then, I'm on to something else.

Ben Kuchera article about this is great, and he hits the nail on the head about this subject like you wouldn't believe.

Thanks to Gizmodo for this.

[Ars Technica via Gizmodo]

1 comment:

Malcolm said...

This is very true. I was at my sister's place this weekend and I gave her my PS3. (Was collecting dust at my house). She hadn't used it in a few months, so I did all the updates to it. It took over an hour and a half. And it was only one update.

Plus every time we've had a party at Kev's and we break out the Guitar Hero or Rock Band, there is always an update.